


Mysterious Process

by Just_A_Simple_Writer



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I have regrets, Mary Keay's A+ Parenting, Other, The author is tired, Trans Gerard Keay, also gerry totally named himself after gerard way send tweet, gerry keay is my comfort character, so i make him have my problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:07:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26113894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Just_A_Simple_Writer/pseuds/Just_A_Simple_Writer
Summary: Life is hard when you hunt evil books for a livingLife is harder when you're also trans
Relationships: Gerard Keay & Gertrude Robinson, Gerard Keay/Michael Shelley
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50





	Mysterious Process

**Author's Note:**

> i just had a fight with my mother over being trans and i needed 2 write about gerry
> 
> title from ezra furman's body was made

Gerry Keay was twelve years old when he realised he was a boy. He wasn't _called_ Gerry back then, of course. He was just a boy without a name  
He was fifteen when he found a name that fit, and if he named himself after a singer then who was to know? He had no intention of telling anyone, not yet. He had no real friends and his only family was his mother, and she was the last person he wanted to tell.  
But of course, he had to, in the end. Being forced to be a girl was too much for him, and the words just tumbled out of him one day.  
“Stop calling me a girl,” he snapped. “I'm a boy, and my name's Gerard.”  
“Don't be silly,” his mother told him, and that was the end of that. There was no arguing with his mother, not when she was set on something. No amount of pleading would make her change her mind, and so Gerry simply didn't bother.  
It hurt, of course. A lot. He loved his mother, or thought he did, especially after everything she'd done for him, raising him all by herself. He couldn't have been easy, and she could be very understanding at times, if a bit set in her ways. She loved him, she really did. Even if it didn't always feel that way.  
He tried to be a girl, to be good, but it was tiring and upsetting, and sometimes all he wanted to do was to curl up in bed and cry.  
But he didn't, because he was a boy, and boys didn't cry.   
He was nineteen when he finally left, unable to bear living with her anymore. He had no money and nowhere to go, but he was so much happier on his own.  
It was sort of an accident that he ended up doing almost exactly what his mother had done all the time he had been growing up, only somehow in the opposite direction. She collected powerful books to use their power; he collected them to destroy. Yin and Yang.  
It _was_ an accident that he met Gertrude. She wasn't much of a mother figure either, but she called him Gerard in an endeared sort of way, and he couldn't help but latch onto her. She was the first person who’d really accepted him unquestioningly, and he thought that he might love her more than he had ever loved his real mother.  
She even pointed him in the direction of a book that could give him the body he really wanted, if in a rather roundabout way. He didn't burn that one.  
So he stayed with her for a while. She didn't see him as her son, he knew that, but it didn't change the way he felt about her. Maybe it was bad, but he didn't much care. Sometimes he even laughed about it, when he was alone. Unrequited found family. What a strange concept.  
He didn't meet Michael Shelly. The boy was dead by the time he joined the archive, though only by a few months. Gerry heard a few stories about him, but that was all.  
What he did meet was the distortion which called itself Michael, and which wore parts of Michael Shelly's face. That called him Gerry, the way he'd always imagined his friends would, and he found himself sort of latching onto that, too. Though not quite in the same way he had with Gertrude.  
He was fascinated with it. With the way it spoke, the way it presented itself, everything. It called itself the embodiment of madness, and it certainly made Gerry's head spin, but there was something else about it, something that made it seem very human. Gerry wasn't quite sure what it was.  
It started spending a lot of time around him. He got very used to the creaking of an opening door, but he never quite lost the thrill of its nails-on-a-chalkboard voice calling _Gerry!_  
He thought, after almost a year of having it around, that he might be in love with it. That was a far more ordinary sort of love to go unrequited, and it should have hurt a little less, apart from the fact that Gerry wasn't entirely certain it was unrequited. Michael liked to touch him, to run its odd fingers over the eyes tattooed all over his body. Gerry didn't think he minded that.  
Michael was an odd creature, but it was a calm in the storm of Gerry's life. It never questioned that he was a boy in the way so many people did, even after his body changed. He was sure it knew he was trans, but never once did it mention the topic, save for idly commenting that Gerry's trans flag was dull and changing the pattern to a never ending spiral which actually looked better, the blues and pinks and white leaking into each other nicely.  
Sometimes it would paint his nails, if it could work up the patience to sit still for long enough, or help him dye his hair.  
It was really only natural when it kissed him.  
Nothing changed after that, particularly. They just kissed, sometimes. Michael moved into Gerry's apartment permanently.  
Gerry Keay was thirty two years old when he finally felt comfortable with his life.

**Author's Note:**

> if there are mistakes idc its 1 am and ive been crying 4 like two hours ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
